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That's the Explorers Podcast. Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War, episode 113, the September

campaign, part five, Panzers. This week, a big thank you goes out to Alex Kurt and Richard for choosing to support the podcast

by becoming members.

You can find out more about becoming a member over at History of the Second World War.com

slash members.

When people think about the German army during the Second World War, it's very common

to think of their armor formations.

Mental images of tanks might be floating across your mind right now,

and they probably look like Panzer 4s or Tigers or Panthers.

All of these would of course be critical pieces of German armor formations during the war,

but none of them would play that role during the Polish campaign.

In fact, when the invasion of Poland began,

over three quarters of the tanks

in the German army were Panzer 1s, which were armed only with machine guns, or Panzer 2s,

which at 9 tons, were about the third the size of a Panzer 4 and a sixth the weight of a Tiger

1. The early Panzers were not bad tanks, but it's important to shift

...